the good old days

I want a hydrogen car. Badly. If a hydrogen fuel cell car was biologically compatible, I’d have its babies. Words can not express how much I want a hydrogen fuel cell car.

So I was overjoyed to hear that Honda plans to lease 150 FCX Clarity cars this summer.

And I was horribly, horribly crushed at the qualifier

only customers currently residing in the Torrance, Santa Monica and Irvine areas who meet additional qualification criteria will be eligible to take an FCX Clarity home

I know this is because you need a hydrogen refueling station near you or the car can’t be driven, and that 2350 miles is a bit outside the vehicle’s range. But I can’t just call up my husband and say, “Honey, we’re moving to Southern California, despite your cushy professor job at University of South Carolina.” (or maybe I can, since USC also means University of Southern California… hmmm…)

Please, Honda. I would wash it every day. I would tuck it in at night. I would bake it cookies. I would take it to auto shows so it could play with other cars. I would take it to a gasoline station and show it how “olde tyme” cars were fed. Please, please, please build a hydrogen station in Columbia SC and give me an FCX.

Rain for the Earth 1937

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

The film, while a bit melodramatic in places, is a bleak reminder of the dangers that are brought by drought. The dust storms that ravaged the country in the 1930’s were vicious. Hearing about it is one thing. Actually watching it is another. The lovely pastoral scenes you normally associate with farms — green crops, cheerful children, fat animals — are starkly contrasted here by dessicated soil, worthless weeds, endless clouds of blowing grit, and abandoned barns and equipment.

Unfortunately, the second half of the film, which deals with the attempted solution of irrigation, doesn’t seem to be available on archive.org — so you’re left with just images of how bad your environment can become, and no reassurance that 1937 America managed to somehow get through.

Piffle. In May 2006, the US Department of Energy said gas prices weren’t all that bad, if you adjusted previous prices for inflation. Of course, even adjusting for inflation the current national average price of $3.16 is getting a wee bit high; also, people drive a lot further in 2008 than they did seventy or eighty years ago.

But adjusting for inflation is complicated math, so it’s a lot easier to just say, “My goodness, $0.19 for gasoline, those folks in 1936 sure were lucky! Why were they getting suckered by fuel-additive scams?” (The modern world gets its share of these as well, including things like magnets to “align” the fuel molecules and other worthless baloney.)

My favorite:

An even greater hoax was the tablets that seemed to change water into gasoline. In this case the “slicker” would drive into a service station and calmly fill his fuel tank with water from a hose. Then, to the amazement of the attendant, he would drop a couple of pills into the tank and drive off, his engine running as well as ever. Naturally, after this happened a few times, the attendant would give almost anything for some of the pellets. The motorist would explain that ordinarily he didn’t sell any pills but finally would part with several packages he had in the car, getting $15 or $20 for enough to “convert 500 gallons of water.” That was the last the service-station man ever saw of his money or the motorist. The answer, of course, was that the motorist had a hidden fuel tank and the rear tank into which he poured the water was just a dummy.

Oddly, average vehicle mileage has remained consistent (without the need to adjust for inflation) over the years at 20 mpg plus or minus a bit. I don’t care whether you’re a believer in global warming or not — it is simply less expensive to have more fuel-efficient cars!

Cheers to Modern Mechanix for making this 1936 article available.